Quotations

“The night is more real than the day.”

Original: Die Nacht ist realer als der Tag. — Illustrates his affinity for darkness, dream, and shadow · Notebook fragment, c. 1911 (German)

Georg Trakl

“The mystic seeks God, for the most part, not in the outer world of art and science and action, but in the darkest and most secret recesses of his own soul.”

Her penetrating description of the inward direction of mystical experience. · A Defence of Idealism

May (Julian) Sinclair

“No reasoning allows or accounts for these moments.”

Recognising experiences of profound perception that seem to exceed rational explanation. · A Defence of Idealism

May (Julian) Sinclair

“Death stands above me, Whispering low I know not what into my ear.”

The intimate approach of death · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

Walter Savage Landor

“In its air of silent mystery there resides for me all the wonder and fascination of the unknown.”

Connecting his affection for cats with his lifelong fascination with mystery · Essay, Cats and Dogs

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected.”

Expressing the central relationship between mystery and fear in his aesthetic · Essay, Notes on Writing Weird Fiction

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“Uncertainty and danger are always closely allied; thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities.”

Explaining why the unknown so readily becomes a source of fear · Essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“It is to the very limitation of this power of language, as it seems to me, that Poetry owes her magic.”

Finding poetic power in what language leaves partly unsaid · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

William Cullen Bryant

“Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.”

Recognising that mystery can contribute to aesthetic pleasure · Lecture, The Name and Nature of Poetry, 1933

A.E.Housman

“There is an influence more mystical than the average critic gives credit for being which is reshaping the foundation of our poetic ideals and visions.”

Recognising cultural forces in poetry that resist straightforward critical explanation · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

William Stanley Braithwaite

“I often think I would put this belief in magic from me if I could.”

Revealing the burden as well as the fascination of Yeats's occult convictions · Essay, Magic

William Butler Yeats

“I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are.”

A direct statement of Yeats's lifelong engagement with occult and mystical practice · Essay, Magic

William Butler Yeats

“They cannot separate the idea of an art or a craft from the idea of a cult with ancient technicalities and mysteries.”

Connecting traditional art with inherited ritual, technique and mystery · Essay, What Is ‘Popular Poetry’?

William Butler Yeats

“The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.”

Stating directly how central mysticism was to Yeats's life and creative work · Letter to John O'Leary, 1892

William Butler Yeats

“The borders of our memories are as shifting, and our memories are a part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.”

Imagining individual memory as participating in a larger collective memory · Essay, Magic, in Ideas of Good and Evil

William Butler Yeats

“The borders of our minds are ever shifting, and many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.”

Expressing Yeats's occult belief in connections extending beyond the individual mind · Essay, Magic, in Ideas of Good and Evil

William Butler Yeats

“I do not quite see why I should pray, or to whom I should pray; and yet pray I must.”

Capturing the tension between religious uncertainty and spiritual instinct · Essay, David Gray and Other Essays

Robert Williams Buchanan

“What a miserable world would this be, were there no spiritual interpretation to its darkest problems!”

Affirming the human need to seek meaning beyond visible circumstances · Essay, Society’s Looking-glass, 1862

Robert Williams Buchanan

“I, on the other hand, am a dreamer, a whiner after the Unknown and Unknowable. I was ‘built that way.”

A self-deprecating description of his lifelong attraction to mystery · Letter to George R. Sims

Robert Williams Buchanan

“Poetry is the expression, through human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning in the aspects of existence; it gives authenticity to our sojourn and constitutes the sole spiritual task.”

Original: La Poésie est l’expression, par le langage humain ramené à son rythme essentiel, du sens mystérieux des aspects de l’existence: elle doue ainsi d’authenticité notre séjour et constitue la seule tâche spirituelle. — Defines poetry as a rhythmic use of language that reveals the mystery within existence. · Letter to Léo d’Orfer, 27 June 1884 (French)

Stéphane Mallarmé

“To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the pleasure of the poem, which lies in the delight of guessing little by little; to suggest it, that is the dream.”

Original: Nommer un objet, c’est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu à peu: le suggérer, voilà le rêve. — Captures the Symbolist ideal of suggestion, mystery and the reader’s imaginative participation. · Interview with Jules Huret, Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire, 1891 (French)

Stéphane Mallarmé